The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham | with guest David Hunt
29m 47s
In this episode of Business Book Club, host Sam Brown and guest David Hunt, a clean energy founder and advisor, discuss Keith Cunningham's "The Road Less Stupid." The book's central idea is that business success hinges on avoiding foolish decisions rather than making genius ones. Cunningham introduces "thinking time," a disciplined practice where founders step away from chaos for 45-60 minutes, one to three times a week, to reflect deeply on key questions. David shares how he uses this to question assumptions, especially during periods of success, to prevent hubris and ensure the business evolves correctly. He recounts how his solar company's early success blinded him to the need for market evolution, costing them ground. The discussion then covers seven tasks a CEO must never delegate, including defining the business's current reality (point A) and future vision (point B), designing the plan, allocating resources, and—most critically—hiring A players and setting company culture. David emphasizes that hiring top talent requires the CEO's direct involvement to sell the vision, as compromising on quality creates a downward spiral. Culture, he notes, is shaped by what leaders tolerate, not what they hope for, and must be actively maintained during rapid growth. The conversation underscores that avoiding stupid decisions through structured reflection and focused leadership is a practical, repeatable path to building a profitable, resilient business.
Welcome to Business Book Club, where top entrepreneurs break down the most powerful insights from the world's best business books. I'm your host Sam Brown and today we're talking about the road less stupid by Keith Cunningham. Cunningham's core philosophy is that success isn't about making brilliant decisions. It's about making fewer stupid ones. If you've ever looked at a decision that you made six months later and thought, "What was I thinking?" then this episode is for you. Keith Cunningham isn't just an author. He's the real life rich dad, having mentored Robert Kiyosaki, prior to writing Rich Dad Poor Dad. He's made millions and he's lost millions and he's made them back again. And the reason that you wrote this book is to help founders and CEOs avoid what he calls the stupid tax. It's the tax that kills most startups. And how he suggests doing this is through a discipline practice he calls "thinking time". Joining me today is David Hunt. David is a heavyweight in the clean energy space. A founder who built Hyperion Search and a strategic advisor to boards and vCs. He spent 30 years watching founders scale and fail in complex markets. Today, David is pulling back the curtain on how he uses Keith's principles to navigate the high stakes world of the energy transition. We're diving into why your own optimism can be your greatest enemy, why you might be outsourcing the one thing that you're actually paid to do, and the three pillars of success that turn a chaotic busy business into a focused, profitable machine. So let's get into it. David, why did you choose the roadless stupid as the book that's had the biggest impact on you? To me, the roadless stupid is a really practical book. It's one I've used at tough periods of time during my growth stages of the business that I've found it. You can instantly put lessons into practice. It's a really practical solution for businesses which are quite young and you don't necessarily have a massive resources to support you. It's a way and a methodology of thinking in advance of problems or when they hit to really come up with hopeless and relatively simple answers to what is quite a complex thing to do. He's written it in such a way that you don't have to read it sequentially. You can just dive in and get the gold from each individual chapter. But because the kind of core message of this book is around thinking time and we're not going to cover those in the lessons. I wondered if you could just talk us through what thinking time is and how you implement it. It's really tough to do actually as a founder where you always think of doing and being busy. You have to be grinding all of the time. And what's it saying is actually what you really need to do is step away and take some time to think. But doing in such a way that it becomes a really routine that you can fit into a week once, twice, three times at most. But having some time aside, 45 minutes to an hour, which sounds an awful lot when you think that there are so many plates that you're spinning. But actually what I found myself and from the people I've advised is it's so critical to be able to take yourself away. And within the book there is some examples or a sort of a guidance on how to do this. But the long and short is to actually physically get away from your desk, get away from the office if you're sat in one. And being a different space which really helps you then to be in different space mentally as well as physically. Essentially it's a discipline of taking one or two times a week, 45 minutes to an hour away from the chaos that is business at times. And just giving yourself some time to breathe and thinking and not sort of try to object for about your thoughts. One he says is he isolates the question or questions that he wants to go deep thinking about before he actually gets into the thinking time to make the best use of it, doesn't he? Yeah, exactly. So for each chapter there's some suggested thoughts after a summary of the problem. And you can use those and I have oftentimes or sometimes you thought of your own question, which is why I think it's usually practical. Because you can make it very relatable to your own situation that you're in and it's not just a sort of a high level concept. Let's jump into our first lesson then question your own assumptions. So can you say is an examined assumptions are the root cause of many business disasters. Tell me more about the examining process and the testing of assumptions. I think the important thing is that the CEO business leader founder is to have a really clear idea of what is your vision. And I think the most founders certainly have that clarity, which is a great thing to have that understanding of this is the purpose, especially in a destructive sort of environment. You think this might not be just a quote, but this is the different way of doing this. This is a disruption. But the counterbalance is that sometimes you can just get so blinkered that you don't question those assumptions or reassess your path as things change around you. Yes, it's good to believe in yourself and believe in your goals and your mission and your plan. But it's also good to step back sometimes and think is this still the best thing? Is this still the right way to be doing things? I think of somebody I've worked with in the past who recently has led a company to a flotation over billion valuations or unicorn. But when I spoke with him first 10 years ago, that was one of his lessons was always question your assumptions even if they seem to be going well and you seem to be on the right track. Not on a daily basis, but sometimes time step back and say is this still the right thing? Because there's many things that you can't measure. How do you go about thinking through whether this is your opinion, whether it's a fact, whether the trend is going in the right direction? How might you go through testing the assumption? I think it's the case of looking at what is your where you are in the market. Ultimately, that's a business you're looking to engage customers and sell products or services. So it's always questioning certainly is what we're providing exactly what the customer needs. That's a diving into customer feedback if you can obtain that. But obviously, ultimate feedback comes in purchases or repurchases and retention. Because to some extent, it can be tough going back to Henry Ford saying, well, they asked people, they just said they wanted to fast the horse. To some degree, your customers don't know what they want. But once there's traction in the market, once you're in there, you should be really closely entwined to, is this still the right thing? Are we still attacking the right customers? That's one aspect. The other is just what's challenging as a founder, particularly when things are going well actually is not to fall into a hubris. And I found this very much in my first business that I found or the solar business that I found that we were flying and that times hubris took over. So I made some poor decisions on the back of that, just from not checking ourselves and slowly down thinking beyond the perceived success or the actual success in terms of revenue. But we're still going in the right direction, doing the right things at the right time. So just taking a step out of it. Take me to the moment where you realize that some of your assumptions were incorrect. And we were able to diagnose like what the root cause of those incorrect assumptions was. For us at the time, we were very early in the solar business in the UK, that's part of 20 years ago now, and the initial plan was to be selling to households, which we were doing. And we're doing exceptionally successfully because we were doing that so fast and so well. Some other parts of the market did better by looking at commercial and utility scale projects. So it was just the case that we were so busy being successful and thinking we were the best thing in the sense-lice bread that we didn't actually say that to the market potential for the business needs to go in a slightly different direction, evolve rather than sort of step change. We didn't need to pivot. We needed to evolve and we were a bit of slow in the evolution and got caught out a little bit like that. Almost like a victim of your own success being you were doing one thing well, but it wasn't the thing you should have been focusing on. Were you able to pivot at that point? We did, yeah we did, but again we lost some ground and it made it slightly harder than it could have been for us to make the transition. But I guess that's the key lester out of this thinking time. You need to do that when times are good, when times are bad, quite often times are so found or are so needed or a business. You kind of think, "Oh, I need to get into a bit of strategy," or gets some outside help when the verbal hits the fan. But actually, when things are going really well, he's also had to step back and question those assumptions. For a founder that's listening who's currently in love with their strategy, who might be in the same situation as you were, everything's going up quite well and they're succeeding. What sort of question should they be asking themselves in this thinking time? It is around almost plain devil's advocate with themselves, around their assessment and their plan and what they think. It helps, of course, the other next turn or sound in board and we'll move on to that for some of the other lessons. But certainly for yourself in that thinking time, to play devil's advocate a little bit and ask yourself some questions that as he does in the book, ask questions that an advisor or somebody more senior might ask you, but ask them of yourself. It's the toughest thing to call yourself out for drinking your own coulays. Maybe quite often, nice to have an advisor to also be in the mix there. If you can do that yourself, I suppose it's just cutting out the extra person in the loop, isn't it? Yeah, we're just trying to give yourself a counter-argument of why it's not a good idea and if you can't, that's obviously a good place. You don't want to be second-guessing yourself every day because you need to go back to the first point, you need clarity, you need to understand what you're going to be focused on that. Just have a now and then take a breather back and just double-checking yourself and try and maybe talk yourself out of something and if you can't, then that's a good sign that you're hopefully in the right direction. Let's move on to lesson number two. What have you got for us here? Seven things a CEO should never delegate. A CEO not delegating, sounds maybe a little bit crazy. The common wisdom is that they should be delegating. So it's not quite as straightforward as that. Tell us more about what that means. Exactly. It's that point of balance because you're quite right. A lot of founders and business leaders fail through lack of delegation, from stress, from burnout, from making poor decisions under pressure, from not building a culture where other people step up. So lots of risks to not delegating, but the lesson here is there are some core things that as much as you can delegate elements of them, they really are the CEO's responsibility, the founder, the MD who is running the show and they shouldn't be delegated in their entirety to buck stops with the CEO. I've got these seven things here. Let's just run through them and then we'll dig into some of them for the biggest lessons. Number one, clarity on point A and point B. So this is clearly defining the reality of where the business actually is right now and then articulate in an exact division of where you want to be in the future. So that's point A to point B. Number two, identifying the gap and the obstacle. What is standing between point A and point B.
Number three, designing the plan and the machine. So as the founder, you are responsible for architecting the strategy and the systems that are needed to overcome the obstacles. Number four is to allocate resources. That is your responsibility as a founder. Number five, hiring A players. Setting the standard for hiring top talent. Number six, build the org chart. And number seven is create the culture. This is about the behavior standards within your company. And I love this quote from the book. You don't get the culture you hope for. You get the culture you tolerate. Where should we start? Where do you see founders most often going wrong with their delegation? I think often with the allocation of resources and their hiring. But if we start at the first round, something that's the ultimate thing is the founders primary responsibility to understand where is the business right now? And where do we want to be? That's the point A to point B. Because you have to articulate the vision to your team and your customers and to your funders and to investors. If you have them, it's your job to be very clear on this is where we are right now. And this is where we want to get to. And then, obviously, the next lesson is looking at the journey between how to get from one point to the other. If you're looking to get to New York, whether you're in Hope, or Hong Kong is very important to know. That's the fundamental thing. To take advice by all means and to seek console. But US, the founder, have to have absolute clarity on what's the vision of the business. Where are you right now? Where are you planning to get to? Without that, everything else kind of is mudded waters, essentially. Do you have a process or a strategy or how you have yourself done this before clearly defining your point A? That could be sometimes the toughest one. Because often we either under or overestimate where we are as a business. Either we've got everything sorted, where perhaps you haven't, or actually, everything's really terrible. And actually, it probably perhaps it isn't. So digging into the weeds of looking at the various levers within the business, looking at your marketing, looking at your sales, looking at your product, looking at the team that you have, looking at the various key functions within the business. And just going to genuinely insight as to, are they fit for purpose? Where do we need to have some improvement? Knowing where you want to get to is relatively easy. If you have a vision, we want to get to be the number one of this or achieve that revenue or whatever your target might happen to be. The vision to a degree is relatively simple. Needs validating. But knowing where you actually are is the critical part that's going to either help you or stop you from getting to that vision point. And to get to that vision point, you're going to need top talent. You're going to need really great people in every position. Talk to me a little bit about how you find A players, what are some of the key things that you need to be doing as a CEO, as a founder, and what does people do wrong? I guess there are two things I've seen over the years, one of which is over delegation. Where a CEO has thought hiring is not something I need to get involved in being the first two or three people. Unless maybe it's a CFO, not a real keyboard member. You can delegate other things to somebody else. Oftentimes, smaller companies don't have a dedicated HR department. It's also a reality that HR is not the same as hiring. They're quite different functions. HR is essentially looking after the resources you have. And it's very much a little diminishing if and legal and a compliance type of function. Hiring top talent is a very different skill. Having the right people on the bus in the right seats is fundamentally important. I think one of your guests talked about the book "Traction" in one of your previous or recent episodes. And there's a very specific part within the traction but that talks about the right people on the bus in the right seats. It's fundamentally important. You asked the founder knowing where you want to get to are the best person to articulate to the time you want to hire division and the mission. Because there's a smaller company. Top talent has options. He or she may be able to go to any number of different organizations. And if you want to attract them, you need to attract them and you need to sell the vision. And the best person to do that is the person who created the vision. And that's the CEO. That over-delegation is something I've seen some mistake. And also, it becomes very tough when you're looking to hire really top talent when you are perhaps a smaller organization and you could on the block or perhaps you kind of forward market salaries for someone from a top tier competitive, for example. So it can be very tough. And the response often is to compromise and to lower the bar. But the trouble with that is once you've lowered the bar, that's where the bar is at. A players like playing with A players, they don't want to work with BRC players. If you're a Premier League footballer, you don't want to be playing with somebody from Division 3. Not out of any stop about them as an individual. It's just there's a golfing class and capabilities. And good people want to work with people who stretch them, who challenge them, can spar with them in whatever capacity. So starting to build your company around, compromising a low bar will stop you hiring A players in the future and ultimately will hold you company back. It seems you stop hiring A players, B players, start hiring C players. And then you can get into that slippery slope. The book, "Who" by Jeff Smart, was a game changing book for me for figuring out how to hire well and how to hire A players. So if anyone wants to dive in a little with D-Pron, definitely advise it. It's a very good book. But again, as you've read from that, it's very difficult to do. Perhaps the biggest challenge of a business, from my perspective, good business needs, a good product or solution or service. It needs financial capability to operate and needs people, the right people, doing the right things. So there's three fundamentals of a business. And if you get the people a bit wrong, everything else, doesn't matter how much money you've got, or doesn't matter how great your vision is, if you haven't got the right people, you're not going to be execute on that. That's certainly from my perspective, the key within the things that C-O should not delegate is people and hiring the right people. Once they're in, you know, delegate management, HR, there's a function in that. But actually bringing the right people through the door is critical to the culture and it's critical to success. Another one of these that I'd like to dig in on a little bit is setting the company culture. I think this is one, maybe, that C-O's don't automatically think that it falls on their shoulders. Can you talk a little bit more about saying the behavioral standards within the company and why company culture is one of these seven pillars that you should never delegate? There are two areas or things fall down in this regard, one of which is a founder who doesn't or a CEO who doesn't set from the very early stages, I think to set the values and the, the culture that they want to create, they just get into doing the business. The other is people who often have in mind and create the culture amongst the founding team or the early team or the small team that they want to have. But as they scale and hire people, they're not very good at communicating that message. So sometimes sticking fast growth companies, you'll have a core team who will buy into the culture and the values and the mission of the business. But very soon they could be in the minority of people in terms of highest, you're hiring quite at a pace. And suddenly you're not communicating it very well and suddenly the culture changes. Do you think in your mind that's the founder? We've set the values and then the people I've talked to on the basis most often are buying into that. But actually does everybody buy into that? So there's that phrase in there, culture is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Imagine I'm a founder, I've realized that my company culture's transitioned away from what I originally set it as, it's become lazy or maybe toxic. What are the steps that I should take? Having realized that this is a problem. How would I change things? Again, back to the solar business. We grew people wise very rapidly. And they came a point where I was in the kitchen of our premises. We're up to 52 employees by that point. But it had grown very, very quickly. And there were four people in the kitchen. First, I didn't know them, didn't know their names, which is not a good thing. But equally then they were talking and overhearing what they were talking. I thought those are not the values that I want in my business. They also not living the culture and values that I assumed the business had. Can you share what they're saying? Something about a customer and just a bit to a rawetry. It was like, that's not who we are as a business. They were installers. So they were having really important front line interaction with the customer base. I didn't jump in on say anything at the time. Because it wasn't anything overtly bad in itself. It was just the culture of thinking of customers and it's a rawetry or an important way. And for me, as a business, your customers are everything. So it just took me to time to first think, actually that's not what I want within the business or what my customers to see. So then it's a case of, well, how do we address that? What we did is we instigated an onsite meeting that was lack of communication. Each person didn't know what they were doing or how important they were in the function of things. I think the installers just felt they were workers in their laborers, which they clearly were to a degree in terms of physically what they were doing. But actually, they were fundamentally important to the business because they were the front line of the business. We organized a day where I could sit down with myself and the other leaders of the business and talk about the vision, going back to the point A point B. This is where we are. This is where I want to go. This is the vision. This is the culture that we want to set. These are the values that we believe in. But then we gave the opportunity to each sort of section of the business to stand up in front of everybody and say, hi, introduce themselves individually and say what they did within the business and why it was important. So there's a much better understanding of who was doing what and why. And therefore, a much more of a passion for helping and supporting everybody and communicating better. And it worked. Again, not everybody buys into these things, going back to not drinking the kuleb, making somewhere as obviously weird, hired, not necessarily every single person. That's an A player because we were hiring so fast to make a few compromises. We did that. You need to essentially apologize if need be. I've seen founders in the past and worked with founders who've gone in front of everyone and said, look, I'm really sorry. It's my, the buck sucks with me. But the culture here isn't what the culture needs to be. It's not your fault, it's mine. Well, that's a tough conversation to have, a tough meeting to hold. Exactly. But what's the consequence? You can go in and say, you're not doing it right. You're not following my plan. You're finger pointing, which doesn't solve any problem. And ultimately, the reason why it is something not to delegate and why it's in this lesson is because it's something you should delegate. It is your responsibility to sort of have control over and guide the culture in the business. And most of the businesses that have been involved with we've had off sites and workshops where people were all inputted into the conversation. But ultimately, it's your job as a CEO to say, OK, this is the culture of all agreed on. The standards need to remain.
that and it's a few to call out standards and if the standards have dropped and the culture's shifted, you have to hold your hand up and say it's my fault. Do you think the CEO should get involved in the onboarding process as well with regards to culture? To a degree it's tough because it's going back to timing and that's why people delegate, "Hey, because it's hard," like you say, somebody else is problem, it's off your plate, but also because if you're hiring a lot of people, it does take up quite a bit of time. So I think they should certainly have an involvement, Jack Dorsey, who said every single employee on their first day in the business had breakfast with him. And fairly certain it was him, even when they obviously became quite a size of organisation, every single employee up to when they were pretty big had breakfast with him on their first day. So to answer your question, I think yes, they should certainly be present, but you have to delegate some of that because some of the onboarding is around H&R and health and safety and there should be people to support on that to a degree or they're going to work in the department, it's much better that the ped of that department has the most interaction with them, but certainly much like the first part of the interview process should be with the CEO. I think the first element of the person's onboarding should be within the first day or two sometime with the CEO. Let's move on to lesson number three. The three pillars of success. You know a book's really good when they can distill a complex concept into three simple steps and something that makes you say, "Yes, that was obvious and why wasn't I already thinking of it like this?" Tell me through these three pillars. The first one is write down your major outcomes every day, the second is plan your day before it starts and the third is be accountable to someone for your plans, commitments and results. So listen much about the individual, so you as a found, you as a CEO, you as a leader, your three pillars of success and they're hugely simple and for that reason, they're actually quite complex and quite often neglected. I'd be sure we'd find anyone out there who's been successful, who's not done these, but also who has worn off the wagons for to speak, not done them consistently all the time, because they're simple, they often get overlooked or they get sidelined because you're busy and fundamentally, as Keith puts it, these are the difference between success and failure. They are three core pillars of success of your business. Actually putting these into place and having a mechanism around putting them into place, I'd love for you to talk through your major outcomes for the day first. How do you come up with what they are first and how detailed do you go with this in your own practice? The point that Keith makes here is that to clean to base society, everything is a goal. My goal is to be the number one at this. Our goal is to be the top in our region. It's more of a wish than anything else and even if you write it down, the goal is quite often to wish. I wish we were going to be this, that and the other. At the end of this day when I look back, what do I want to have achieved? What do I want to have happened? I always did threes. I think threes are great. I always start them every day. If I do nothing else today, but I do three things, will I say I won the day? Those are outcomes rather than wish you wish you go. It's very clear. Today I want to speak to five new customers. I want to sit down with my team to go through this part of the strategy or whatever it might have to be. It was very clear what you want to achieve. You have to step back a little bit because all of this comes down to what is the vision of the business and what's your course? Right? The quarterly, monthly and then weekly and then off-season, you break it down daily. It sounds like a lot, but it's not really. If you start the course and the end of the course, this is where I want to be. Then it's the case, well, what do I need to do this month in order to achieve that? Then within the month, what do I need to do this week to achieve my months? Use break it down quite simply. So it starts every day, which is the second part, is actually writing down and actually planning your day in advance. It's amazing how many founders and people have worked with who wing it. I've done it myself in the past because you think I'm in control of this. I know what's going on. I just need to keep the plate spinning. But before you long, you're keeping a lot of plates spinning, but perhaps the one or two core ones and not spinning quite how they should be. Think about the outcomes on a daily basis that you want to achieve. It's a great force in function for prioritizing and making yourself say no to things, isn't it? Because to be honest, any working person who's not got a list of 20 things that they should be doing that day, but what are the three things that really matter that are going to move the needle? Exactly. It's very different from a to-do list, which again, to-do list is a second. So what's the core outcomes want to achieve and then what's the to-do I need to get to that point? But I always say to myself and to people that have been working with or working for me is win the day. So if you can get to them the day, I would like to have done all these things which they didn't get around to. I wish I could have ticked off more things off my to-do list, but the start of the day I wanted to do the history things and I did them. So I've won the day. Planning the day before, do you have like a shutdown routine at the end of the day that you plan the next day? What's your process? I think best advice is to do it the night before, but I'm always at the end of every day I'm gone. So I tend to get up early and do it in advance of the day. So over a coffee, over a practice, look at what other outcomes want to achieve and then follow that in no case. So what other to-do is what are specific things I want to get done today? But again, writing them down. These to be more clear than just a to-do list because the to-do list there's a million things to do and you can very quickly run up 20, 30 things that need to get done. It's that prioritization thing of the quadrants. With your urgent, which are important, with your essential, which are time-wasting. Because it's very easy to be busy, very, very easy to be busy and a busy fool at that. So writing down the specifics of what are the outcomes, what are the key and for the things which are the to-do's which get to those outcomes, having clarity on that at the start of every day I think is really important and it's really easy to fall off of that bandwagon to forget or to stop or to get out of the habit of doing it. The final one here is be accountable or find an accountability partner. This is maybe somewhat easier, lower down the org chart where the manager should be the accountability partner for the individual. But if you're on the top of the pyramid, who's your accountability partner at that point? How do you go about finding them? I've always found that the most difficult part and I don't quite know why, but having a mentor and an accountability partner just to hold you true. How should you someone you clearly respect and you wouldn't want to fudge your lie to? Because it's very easy to do, did you do this at the end of the day because of this and you can find a record as well excuse. Oh, we had this little crisis so I didn't get around to doing those things as I was going to do. But somebody who is tough on you, not tough to the point of being a Sergeant Major in the Army kind of thing, but somebody who is honest with you, will that let wash? Okay, fair enough. Or someone who doesn't understand a little bit of business, perhaps, will let that wash. There are some things accountability wise that your partner, your friends might haunt you to go into the gym, having a run, and those sorts of things are important and your friends can pull you up on that and say, why aren't you doing it? You said you would. In business sometimes, particularly hard at the chain, probably someone needs to have an understanding a little bit of how business is run. So finding a mentor who I'd be one of your board members if you have a board, if you don't, then perhaps consider one or a mentor or a peer from another successful business that you know where you can just have this arrangement. Often it's a nice duality to say let's be each other's accountability partners. But I think it needs to be someone who understands some of the challenges of running a business because they'll spot when you're fludging and they'll spot when something's genuinely detracted you from what you said you were going to do. Because at times crisis has happened, you have to go through that, but it is easy to convince someone there was something happened when a more experienced mentor or supporter of accountability apart. And might say, actually, that's not really a good excuse because you still could have done that. It's tough, but finding someone who's a more experienced, not necessarily a more experienced that helps, but someone who knows a bit about how it is in your shoes. So someone that's either a leader in a business or has formerly been a leader in a business. I found in the past that joining a founder community or what worked really well for me running an agency was joining a couple of agency networks. I was lucky I had a co-founder and I was a great accountability partner, but it can be quite a lonely position being the CEO, being the person in charge where the book stops of you, often you need somebody kind of external to the company to be bouncing ideas off properly. And that's why I'm a great advocate for having a board, whether started a Hyperion business, knew a very small business, two or three of us in the business as well, me to start with, but very soon just a few of us, but I still constructed a board. It wasn't overly intense, nobody was getting massive salaries on anything, but I managed to find some partners or people that I knew and respected who would give some of their time just to be those advisors. And initially, they were being paid nothing and after a while we paid them something, but by no means what they were worth, but their insight and their counsel was hugely invaluable. And I think a lot of people like to be in that position and kind of like to give back when they've made it, definitely worth asking the question and reaching out to those people. Yeah, I would do that. I think that's another thing about you feeling that it's either running important or that you're running important potentially, but actually, at the very point, people do like to help people, generally think that even in this crazy world, people are generally helping people where they can. And people who've got a lot of often experienced do like to share that. That's the reason why a lot of people like myself, a lot of people when they come to a point in their executive career, don't want to retire even if they can afford to, but want to go on and be a board director or a chair and advisor and support businesses and mental. It keeps them fresh and engaged, able to give something back. So if you have someone aspirational that you think would be great mental for you, you've got nothing to lose by asking them. Yeah. And I suppose it's the reason why people such as yourself come on podcasts, such as this. So I massively appreciate you coming on. Thanks so much. It's been great digging into the work and hearing your wisdom and how you apply it to your own life. For everyone listening, David also hosts the leaders in clean tech podcasts, where he speaks with founders and operators shaping the future of the space. So if you're interested in clean tech, definitely well worth a listen. Also, if you want to buy the road less stupid by Keith Cunningham, there's a link in the show notes. And thank you very much for listening. I will see you on the next one.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The core principle of "The Road Less Stupid" is that success comes from avoiding stupid decisions, not making brilliant ones, with "thinking time" as the key discipline to prevent the "stupid tax."
Founders must regularly question their own assumptions and play devil's advocate, especially during times of success, to avoid hubris and ensure their strategy remains valid.
A CEO should never delegate seven critical responsibilities
Hiring A players is crucial; compromising on talent lowers the bar and repels other top performers, while the CEO must personally sell the vision to attract them.
Company culture is set by the CEO through behavioral standards and must be actively communicated as the company scales to prevent dilution.
Summary:
" The book's central idea is that business success hinges on avoiding foolish decisions rather than making genius ones. Cunningham introduces "thinking time," a disciplined practice where founders step away from chaos for 45-60 minutes, one to three times a week, to reflect deeply on key questions. David shares how he uses this to question assumptions, especially during periods of success, to prevent hubris and ensure the business evolves correctly.
He recounts how his solar company's early success blinded him to the need for market evolution, costing them ground. The discussion then covers seven tasks a CEO must never delegate, including defining the business's current reality (point A) and future vision (point B), designing the plan, allocating resources, and—most critically—hiring A players and setting company culture. David emphasizes that hiring top talent requires the CEO's direct involvement to sell the vision, as compromising on quality creates a downward spiral.
Culture, he notes, is shaped by what leaders tolerate, not what they hope for, and must be actively maintained during rapid growth. The conversation underscores that avoiding stupid decisions through structured reflection and focused leadership is a practical, repeatable path to building a profitable, resilient business.
FAQs
Success isn't about making brilliant decisions; it's about making fewer stupid ones. Cunningham emphasizes avoiding the 'stupid tax' that kills many startups.
Thinking time is a discipline where founders step away from their desk for 45 minutes to an hour, one to three times a week, to think deeply. It involves isolating key questions beforehand to make the best use of the time.
Unquestioned assumptions can lead to business disasters. Founders should periodically play devil's advocate and reassess their path to avoid hubris, as success can blind them to needed evolution.
They are: clarity on point A and point B, identifying the gap and obstacle, designing the plan and machine, allocating resources, hiring A players, building the org chart, and creating the culture.
The CEO is the best person to articulate the vision and attract top talent. Compromising on hiring lowers the bar, repels A players, and ultimately holds the company back.
Optimism can lead to overconfidence and failure to question assumptions. Without stepping back to reassess, founders may miss market shifts or make poor decisions.
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